


ashes to ashes, dust to dust

by MangaFreak15



Category: Bleach
Genre: Gen, Human Experimentation, Implied/Referenced Torture, Post-apocalyptic AU, Slow Build, Something!Kisuke, no shinigami
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:14:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24658189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MangaFreak15/pseuds/MangaFreak15
Summary: There is nothing but silence in this bleak world, save for the bare minimum of noise the person makes, steps whisper-quiet and soft, treading lightly so as not to alert any undead creatures in the vicinity to his location. Nothing will get you killed quicker than making a ruckus out in the open, where monsters roam eternally hungry for the slightest scrap of flesh.His name is Kurosaki Ichigo, and he is one of the survivors of the Hollow Apocalypse that had devastated the world and turned it into a hellish landscape seven years ago.[Zombie Apocalypse AU with a twist]
Relationships: Eventual Kurosaki Ichigo/Urahara Kisuke, Kurosaki Ichigo & Hirako Shinji, Kurosaki Ichigo & Urahara Kisuke
Comments: 9
Kudos: 62





	ashes to ashes, dust to dust

**Author's Note:**

> Tbh, I have absolutely no clue where I'm going with this, so updates will probably be (very) sporadic.

The sky is gray. Nowadays, everything is gray, if not black. The atmosphere is choking on endless ashes, all earthly vegetation naught but dust in the wind, the land reduced down to rubble and sand and empty concrete jungles. Many piles of bones rise up out of the ground, some human, some not, great rib cages towering over the never-ending dunes, the bleached skulls of the dead slowly eroding away. The trees have long gone rotten, screaming as the ash covers their roots and suffocates the soil, until fertility is but a mere memory of a green and distant past. It has not rained for a very long time.

A single figure picks its way amongst the remains of a garrison base, gloved hands carefully turning over weathered stones, shifting through broken glass, and rummaging through the ransacked rooms for something useful. There is nothing but silence in this bleak world, save for the bare minimum of noise the person makes, steps whisper-quiet and soft, treading lightly so as not to alert any undead creatures in the vicinity to his location. Nothing will get you killed quicker than making a ruckus out in the open, where monsters roam eternally hungry for the slightest scrap of flesh.

His name is Kurosaki Ichigo, and he is one of the survivors of the Hollow Apocalypse that had devastated the world and turned it into a hellish landscape seven years ago.

He crouches low when he sees something metallic poking out of the sand. A closer look reveals that it is the curve of a trapdoor handle, one of the bulkier ones that are hard to lift, but are far more sturdy and secure in comparison. There is something strange about this one, however. Ichigo brushes the sand away the best he can, shifting loose rocks and various broken odds and ends out of the way to uncover the entirety of the steel door, frowning down at the faded seals scratched into the metal. Seals mean that there is something below that is meant to be contained. Given how worn away they look though, the seals must have lost their power quite a while ago, yet the trapdoor remains shut and unbroken. Whatever is below must still be there.

The orange-haired man slowly hoists the trapdoor up, silently celebrating in his head when it doesn’t squeak or groan even once. Whoever made this was _good._

There’s a set of simple stone steps leading into the darkness beyond. A stale, musky air flows out of the opening and joins the poisonous atmospheric air currents, swirling with dense ash and sulfur. Ichigo, who is wearing a combo of reinforced clear-vision goggles along with a special particulate filter mask attached to the oxygen tank at his back, only notices the smell of dust. He stares into the unknown for a few moments, squares up, and bravely descends, one foot after the other. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

He reaches into his toolbelt to retrieve his portable flashlight, clicking it on to the lowest setting. Nothing jumps out at him, thankfully. The stairs go on for an awfully long time, finally leveling out into a narrow hallway with several dead switch panels lining one wall. The other wall has a series of dried bloody handprints pressed against it, some with trails long enough to reach the floor, the little puddles long since gone black and dry. Lovely.

The hallway branches off into two separate ones about fifty meters from the stairs. The hallway on the right has several identical doors on each side, most likely the troops’ living quarters before the base got cleared out. The hallway on the left has an iron gate closing it off, an enormous paper seal slapped on to it dead center, the inky brush strokes hurried and sloppy. Ichigo doubts there’s any power left in it now, and pokes it with one of his daggers to be sure. The paper falls apart easily, flaking off the gate in pieces. Huh, so much for the seals of olde. The gate doesn’t fare much better against his hand-held laser. He holds the part that he cut off so that it doesn’t clatter to the floor and make an unholy amount of noise in the process, then delicately leans it against the wall. He steps through the hole he made and continues on.

This corridor is fairly short and opens up to a large circular room lined with hundreds of experimental tube-shaped tanks. All of the tanks are broken, shattered glass littering the cool tiled floor—all except for one. The biggest one, situated in the back of the room. He crosses the chamber quickly, reaching the glass container in no time at all. Whatever’s in here is presumably what the base’s former occupants had wanted to seal off.

It’s… he tilts his head curiously, trying to make sense of the bizarre thing suspended in a light greenish fluid inside the tank. He has no clue what it is. A person? A bird? Some ungodly amalgamation of both? The ‘test subject’, for lack of better term, has wild, pale-blond hair that waves gently in the tank’s liquid, dull reddish-orange and gold feathers poking out of its head from behind. A breathing mask covers its nose and mouth. It has pale skin that is littered with surgical scars, clear signs of torture that makes Ichigo clench his fists and grit his teeth in rage. The strange being in the tank doesn’t have hands—instead, its arms sprout more of those red, orange, and gold feathers, three black claws curled loosely at the end. The thing’s torso—and if it had been human once, it must have been male, the flat contours of the creature’s chest indicate as such—tapers into a narrow waist, the skin turning into feathers from the hips down, ending in two black, bird-like legs with large feet that has three forward-extending digits each, and one in the back for balance. Ribbons of tiny crimson rings flow from the back of its pelvis and drift around its feet, most likely its tail(s).

His eyes are drawn to the plain plaque attached to the base of the tank, spelling out _Subject #4219-_ 𝛂 _._ No name, just a designated number. Nothing about the being in question, nothing to indicate if it—he?—had had a life previously before becoming this abomination. The orange-haired man lightly places his fingers on the glass, feeling how cool it is beneath the tips. The test subject doesn’t stir from its deep slumber. The only reason he knows that the thing is miraculously still alive is due to the slow rise and fall of its chest, barely visible through the green liquid inside the tank.

_Who are you?_ Ichigo thinks, gazing at the test subject’s face, which looks no older than twenty-five. _What’s your story?_ He contemplates the best way to get the being out of the tank without breaking the glass and possibly showering himself in unknown fluid and shards, not to mention the possibility that the subject may or may not retain higher brain function and may or may not attack him on sight. He may be wearing something equivalent to a hazmat suit (but tougher), but he also knows that if he ruins _another_ piece of ArmaGear, he’ll get yelled at. Repeatedly. Source materials are scarce in this world, so the gear is notoriously difficult to make and he is one of the only Scouts who is cleared to wear one. He also (unfortunately) holds the record for the highest number of broken ArmaGear in the past three years.

In the end, he opts to stand as far away as possible and shoot his laser at the tank. The effect is instantaneous—fluid begins to trickle out of the small hole he burned through the glass, but the force of the liquid converging on to that one point begins to put pressure on the tank from the inside, leading to the glass to slowly crack and spiderweb all the way around. Then it _explodes,_ raining tiny glass shards and drops of the unknown liquid all over the tile floor. He ducks into the hallway to escape the worst of it, only peeking out to check if anything had happened to the being that was in the tank.

The test subject has flopped out of the tank and now lays face-down on the floor in a pool of fluid and glass shards, though there doesn’t appear to be any blood. It doesn’t move, even as Ichigo cautiously edges forward. Its dull feathers look waterlogged and soggy, its hair a sticky mass of tangled pale gold hiding its face from view. The sad little ribbons of its tail trail out of the broken tank, some of the scarlet loops caught on the edges of the jagged glass.

Ichigo wonders if there is an area where he can take the creature to get cleaned up. The garrison base is old and weathered, but if—and that's a _very_ big if—the place still has water somewhere, he can give the test subject a much needed bath.

He turns the thing over so that it’s at least laying on its back and not the front before he goes hunting for a bathroom.

There's a shower room just past the soldiers' dorms, dusty as the rest of the place. Ichigo isn't surprised when he turns the shower knob and sees nothing come out. A quick search through the cabinets reveals a few musty towels and not much else. He takes the towels with him, if only because he can at least use them to wipe off the rest of the weird green fluid from the test subject. It can’t have been comfortable being submerged like that this whole time.

When he returns to the laboratory, the hybrid creature is still exactly as he had left it. Ichigo sets the towels to the side and attempts to carry it to a relatively clean part of the room. Its head lolls limply against his shoulder, reminding him far too much of a doll with no will of its own. He props it against a wall, arranging its tail so that the ribbons don’t get caught on anything, and goes to retrieve the towels.

His communicator buzzes in his pocket, a crackle of static coming from the earpiece in his right ear, _“Operator Hirako to Scout Kurosaki, do ya copy?”_

He cradles the towels to his chest as he reaches up to tap the earpiece. “This is Scout Kurosaki, I hear you,” he murmurs. He dumps the towels on the floor next to the unconscious being and kneels in front of it.

_“What’s yer current status?”_

“I’m inside an abandoned military base in District 49. I have discovered a surviving laboratory specimen in the underground bunker and am in the process of cleaning it up. Over,” Ichigo replies, taking a towel in hand and gently rubbing it over the test subject’s head.

_“ETA?”_

“Between 1900 and 2200 hours.” Ichigo wipes down the being’s face, its neck, and its bare torso. The towel comes away dyed green, with jelly-like chunks on the parts he used to remove the strange substance. Ichigo unceremoniously tosses it aside and picks up another one. “If possible, can you try to look up evidence of unsanctioned human experimentation in District 49 before the Apocalypse?”

A sharp inhale comes over the device. _“No promises, but I’ll try. Any specifics?”_

“Try to find information on Subject 4219-𝛂, that’s the surviving specimen I found. It’s pretty bad. I don’t know what kind of torture they put this one through, but it’s definitely not human anymore,” Ichigo says, using the second towel to clean off the test subject’s feathers the best he can. He sees one of its legs twitch against the floor, more of an unconscious spasm than a deliberate movement, but it still makes him raise his guard. He stops scrubbing the towel over its feathers and simply watches it, alert and ready to react to any overt displays of violence. He continues cleaning when there is no further movement from the specimen beyond the slow, steady rise and fall of its chest.

Shinji’s voice crackles into his ear one last time, _“Will do. Stay safe out there, Scout Kurosaki. I’ll see ya when ya get back. Operator Hirako, out.”_

Ichigo reaches up to tap the earpiece again, closing the communication channel and leaving him in silence once more. He continues to wipe down the creature with the towels he has on hand, grimacing as the residual liquid from the tank thickens with exposure to the air and turns sticky and goopy. Definitely not something that someone should have remained submerged in for long periods of time.

Once the test subject is relatively clean, Ichigo steps back. Now for the biggest issue: how is he supposed to get this thing back to Fort Gamma? Not only is it taller than him, but he won’t be able to fight and carry it at the same time. Given how long it must have been down here, it probably doesn’t have any resistance to the miasma of ash swirling around outside either. Honestly, waking it up seems to be his best bet at the moment, despite the risks that option poses. As for _how_ to wake it up, well… he supposes he can try a few methods to see which one works best (without having to resort to violence, of course).

Simply shaking it doesn’t work, neither does repeating any combination of “wake up,” “get up,” or “rise and shine, you’re looking fine!” Hey, in a bleak post-apocalyptic world, one had to find a way to have fun, alright?

Ichigo goes back over to the destroyed tank, searching for any clues that he may have missed the first time. He leans over to stare at the plaque attached to the metal base, squinting really hard as if he can set it on fire with the power of his glare and make it reveal the answers to all of Ichigo’s questions.

He blinks when he registers that the plaque is slightly tilted to the left. Frowning, he reaches out with a gloved hand to prod at it. There’s an ominous clicking sound, then the plaque falls forward to reveal a hidden drawer behind it. Score! Ichigo carefully pulls the drawer open, wary of any traps set to go off when the drawer is opened by someone without authorized access. When nothing blows up or tries to kill him, he pulls the drawer all the way open and looks at what’s inside.

A sheaf of documents greets his eyes, the topmost paper stamped with a bright red 「 **FAILED** 」over a detailed profile listing the subject’s name, picture, and history. Ichigo grits his teeth when he sees the photo of a young man softly smiling back at him, clean-shaven and handsome, with gun-metal gray eyes and no trace of feathers in his hair. The profile has his name down as _Urahara Kisuke, age 27._

There’s two notes clipped to the pile, one with a hastily scrawled ‘DO NOT STARVE’ and the other with ‘attempt to modify w/ crow DNA —> unsuccessful.’ Ichigo flips through the papers, feeling sick to his stomach as the entirety of the experiment is revealed through words, pictures, and observations, all of it written in a very detached, clinical tone. Everything is in there, what methods they used, the modification process, increasing the threshold of pain tolerance, artificial skin grafts using their newly-developed Hierro model—

Ichigo almost throws up at the grisly photographs included with each section of the report and he physically has to close his eyes to keep himself from hyperventilating and throwing the papers away in rage. He hoped these sick bastards got what was coming for them. If he finds out any of them are still alive, he’ll feed them to the Hollows himself, burn the monsters to a crisp, and happily piss on the ashes.

He looks at the very last page of the documents, where a single line draws his eye where it’s been written in bold black letters: **ACTIVATION CODE —** _“Awaken, Benihime.”_

His eyebrows shoot up behind his goggles and he looks at the limp body of the test subject propped against the wall. This thing has an activation code that’s similar to a zanpakutou’s release command? Had they—oh god, had these fuckers taken a human and tried to create an _artificial zanpakutou_ with him?! Ichigo dearly wishes one of them was in front of him so he could punch them to kingdom come and then some.

The orange-haired man shakily drops the papers to his side. He taps his earpiece, murmuring, “Scout Kurosaki to Operator Hirako, do you copy?”

It only takes a couple of seconds for Shinji to reply, _“This is Operator Hirako, I hear ya.”_

“You don’t need to look up information on Subject 4219-𝛂 anymore, I found the… the documents. On the experiment. It’s… gruesome,” Ichigo explains shakily. He raises a hand to scrub through his hair, but then realizes that he’d just wiped an unknown substance off of a lab specimen and it’s still on his gloves, and he quickly aborts the motion.

_“Oh shit. Do ya need me ta call in Scout Kuchiki for ya?”_ Shinji sounds faintly concerned.

Ichigo takes a deep breath. “No, it’s okay. I’ll be fine. I just wanted to let you know,” he says resolutely. He begins to walk back over to the unconscious being. “My ETA’s still the same.”

_“Good. We’ll talk when ya get back, okay?”_

“Yeah, okay. Scout Kurosaki, out.” Ichigo ends the conversation with a tap. He looks at the test subject, repeating the activation code in his head. It’s kind of weird that the name in the code and the name in the profile are different. If they meant to create an artificial weapon, why not just use the man’s name instead of creating a new one altogether? He breathes, shaking out his limbs, and wonders if this will actually work.

“Awaken, Benihime,” he commands, gaze fixed on the test subject.

And gray eyes snap open.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a comment before you go~ I'd love to know if people can guess why Kisuke's subject number is 4219.


End file.
